Old Bridge Number 68 Views

Courtesy of JP3.

Located about midway between Hartline and Hanson. 

Sunrise With The CW Local

Photo courtesy of Blair Kooistra. 

August 15 1981

Blair says:

"Sunrise with the CW Local. Climbing the hill into Hanson Washington, having left Almira a little before with a fresh relief crew on out of Spokane.

"No place can one feel so alive than standing with your feet in the soil amid wheat fields the wind gently blowing, the sun making its first efforts to warm the day's air. It'll be a hot one by afternoon."

Hand Drawn CW Map

Drawn by Robert Scott for a feature on the Eastern Washington Gateway he was working on at the time.

1983 BN Washington Grain Elevator Directory E-M

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

BN 1975 Station Revenues C-H

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

1971 BN Consolidated Annual Station Earnings

Courtesy of Aaron Schwarz and the PNRA.

Hanson F Unit View

Photo courtesy of Blair Kooistra.

Blair says:

"F-unit Friday. . .

"If I could sum up all what made chasing trains through the dusty expanse of central Washington's Columbia River basin in the late 1970s in one photo--this would be it.

"The wheat rush continues in the irrigated scablands (that sounds painful just to write that!) in the Grand Coulee region, and Lincoln County is one of the state's great grain-producing area. The former Northern Pacific branchline to Coulee City can handle the latest 100 ton covered hoppers, but a car fleet stretched thin with harvest rush has found this morning's return trip to the mainline at Cheney of the Coulee City Turn consisting of 31 old 50-ton capacity 40' boxcars. We see that old Rocky The Goat is rusted away, the once-bright CB&Q Chinese Red faded to pale orange, and even the cars wearing with with-it Burlington Northern Cascade Green are on their last legs. Six-foot wide car doors are coopered and the holes in the wooden flooring plugged to keep leaks to the minimum; friction journals and running boards up top still survive in a "modern" railroad era where the high-capacity covered hopper has all but taken over.

"From off the 44 Road northwest of Almira, we see seven equally ancient locomotives--a mix of 1500 and 1750 hp. EMD Geeps and F-units--top the hill out of Hartline, curving past the concrete elevator at Hanson as tracks attain a new creek drainage to follow down to Almira. This railroad wanders between these rolling hills, looking for the most advantageous gradient, playing hide and seek with US Highway 2 and mostly crossing gravel farm roads at obtuse angles.

"Streamlined covered wagons assigned to the old NP Parkwater shops in Spokane spent most of their time pushing trains over Marias Pass out of Essex, Montana, but their use on eastern Washington branchlines is becoming more common as pairs of SD45's have transitioned into the helper duty. The F's have held on, but in another year most will be in storage with the final operation of the few F9 cab units left in service lasting into late fall of 1981.

"Having lost the Milwaukee Road to photograph earlier in the year, discovery of the CW branch, its old freight cars and streamlined F-units, has made trips to the east side of the state from Seattle a new obsession. But of course, even this was being pushed out the door by progress.

"Owned by the state of Washington now, and operated by low-bid shortline contractors, the CW branch is still moving the grain to the west coast markets. And, true to what we witnessed in 1980, even today it operates with old (1990s) locomotives and the same style and size of covered hoppers deemed cutting-edge 43 years ago, but now deemed too obsolete to make a living on the mainline.

"Things really never change."

EWG Hanson View

Photo by Gary Durr.

May 2017

Grain isn't the only thing that the EWG(Eastern Washington Gateway RR) hauls... on this beautiful spring day C-40 #9129 hauls an extremely long string of Bare table cars East Bound through Hanson Washington. The cars have been in Storage all along the EWG line for more than a couple of years, and they are finally getting called back to service... They will be brought to Geiger Jct. and there the 9129 unit will be traded out for two big UP units, for it's final leg into Cheney Washington, where it will be interchanged to the BNSF and eventually forwarded to Union Pacific.

BN AFE Index Card-Hanson

Courtesy of the PNRA and Aaron Schwarz.

"Boiling heat, summer stench…”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon. 

August 3, 2018

Burning. Time. Land. Light. EWG is on the move and hogger Zachary Hastings has a firm set applied; pinching 456 wheels wanting to roll on half as many axles. Hastings having transitioned the three D’s to digging-in dynamics – that lonely reedy-whine tells – upon cresting at Hanson two poles past, now just west of Almira occupying Starkel’s dust-parched dirt road in a near 1.3% slope sloping down to 1.5%. 8,000 tons bunched: fifty-five filled steel railed wagons plus two TILX tanks black bringing up the rear empty, flashing Fred hanging, pushing. This annum’s infernos west belch rising smog high up, blotting out – in seconds – a blood-red black hole sun sinking. Foreground, stubbled. Thickened whisker-waves of amber shaven combine-close attests harvest is in highest gear, confirmed by that permeating, so distinctive powdery, wheat-sweet harvest-time odor commingling this pungent scent of scorched earth, with exhausted, burnt diesel-heated fumes whirling grit altogether swirl, assailing olfactories and searing every eye including Heaven’s all-seeing eye.

Galloping Goose

From the "Spokesman Review."

February 26, 1950

A Trip To The EWG

Guest post by Dan Pipkin.

This wasn't my first official chase of the EWG but it's the first time I've managed to bring back photos. Taken the last day of 2017 at Almira with the crew getting the train ready to head out West a little after 9 AM on a frigid December morning.

Underway to Hanson with 5 cars to be loaded at the elevator.

One of my favorite shots from the trip; after dropping off a few cars at Hanson the EWG makes it way towards Cement while running light power, in the distance is the little town of Hartline.

EWG running light power through Hartline headed towards Cement for more work to be done. 

Coasting downgrade from Odair, the EWG is nearly at the end of the line at Coulee City.

Now changing cabs to 9129 with a new nose job, the crew begins shuffling cars around the Coulee City grain facility.

Another shot of the EWG working Coulee City on a beautiful, chilly December afternoon.

With the work being finished at Coulee City, the EWG heads back East towards Odair for some more shuffling of rail cars.

One of the best shots of the day was also the last wrapping up a nice little chase. The EWG was headed through Odair with some more work to do once again, with only an hour or so left of daylight.

“Mjölnir Strikes Hanson”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

May 5, 2017

Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad was on the move as numerous, heavily charged electrical storms brewed, collided and moved through Central and Eastern Washington during the night of Thursday (Thor’s Day) May 4th and into small hours of Friday the 5th. Though I myself was not working, I decided to forgo sleep and exploit the opportunity to follow my colleagues Engineer Ted Curphey and Conductor Gary Durr headlong – literally – into the storm(s) to bag some lightning-slash-train images. Early on it seemed I had made a bad bargain: a previous storm had petered out. Then, as the crew began setting out empties at Almira, a fierce storm began exploding on the near south-southwest horizon. Lightning flashes could be measured less than seconds apart. Thousands of mostly horizontal intracloud and many vertical, negatively charged imixed with unmistakable positively charged cloud-to-ground strikes (as seen in the left background of the image) illuminated the ominous atmosphere in paroxysms of divine flash bursts. Here, just past MP91, at Hanson Ted brings the train into the longest tangent on the line as an intracloud and a stepped leader bolt from Thor's Mjölnir discharge. Yet there are just a few rain drops. I am dry though the air is noticeably electrified. Image made, I’m en route to the next station of Hartline and then all Hell breaks loose as the skies open and a deluge of biblical proportions with golfball sized hailstones is unleashed. Wipers: unable to keep up. Fusilladed: like the business end of a 50 cal. Lightning: strobing in rapid succession. I am forced to a crawl but make into Hartline before Ted and the train - itself sustaining numerous strikes - where the inclemency finally subsides nearly an hour later. 

1973 BN Consolidated Annual Station Earnings-4

Courtesty of Aaron Schwarz.

“Tunnel Motor Blues”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

January 24, 2019

Blue hour at Hanson, but a stub track of antiquated elevators in a non-existent community on the CW Sub, on a sunless overcasted January day, gaining elevation one crosstie at a time, though nothing like the tunneled Sierra grades, engineer Ted Curhpey with the usual file of laden CH’s in tow, spies his train in the mirror of former Cotton Belt to wheat belt tee-dash-two 8702 as her trident of ample candles electrifies the near parallel sticks like illuminated neon gas-filled glass tubes pointing the way. Combined exhaust and radiator heat deflection of the three-motor consist distorts the hibernal landscape so barren, yet so fertile rolling fields neath a cold cotton-white snow blanket in sharp contrast with the boiling wool-black exhaust plume. The momentary cacophony fades in a muffled doppler effect and the soundless vacuum is filled with emptiness, again. Every time I’m here I marvel at why the local farmer’s posted an unambiguous sign nearby. Says, “No Hunting, No Trespassing, No Excuses, Violators Will Be Prosecuted.” Seems no nefarious spirit would care to even kick a rock, out here. 

“Delta Dawn”

Guest post by Frederick Manfred Simon.

March 7, 2017

Dawn begins to break into a new day as the sun pushes the darkness ahead of herself pressing the ever-shifting layers of Jovian-seeming clouds like curtains of the night aside finding the searching deltoid beam of a westing Eastern Washington Gateway empty glinting off the railhead on the more than 125-year-old right-of-way. Having dipped down from the gradually flattening 1.20% grade at Hanson five miles yonder with two units and an abbreviated file of PS2’s and ACF’s it now bears down on the barely-stirring 150-soul hamlet eponymous of early settler John Hartline (German, Anglo-Saxon for strong or bold). And though the crew has no work here today, Engineer Ted Curphey will signal their “just-passing-through” as he chimes the iconic Nathan-crisp two longs, one short, one long twice: once at Range Street just a stones through from the Assembly of God Chruch where the “light” is, still, always on and shortly thereafter at Main-Chelan Street where between, butted-tightly along the tracks, stand the sky-scrapping elevators of grain. 

2010 EWG Scoot Train Chase Coulee City To Hanson

October 8, 2010

Featuring the newly arrived WRIX 2891.